During our free-verse poetry unit, we'll study the intricacies of language for it's own sake. We'll make language as beautiful as it's possible for language to be. We will capture the essence of the meaning of life, whether that essence is reflected in finishing a marathon, climbing Kilimanjaro, or the feeling right before you finally ask out that SUPER cute dude in your science class that you've ALWAYS had a crush on. 
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...again, "writing" is a misnomer. We'll be "typing" free-verse poetry. It just sounds so dull and mundane. Insurance reports are typed. Poems are written. Maybe I'm a traditionalist...
The calendar above shares the proposed dates of our unit. While 90% accurate, keep logging into Dojo for daily updates.

Poetry Planning

Like short stories. the first week of our poetry unit is devoted to planning our poems, and learning the prerequisite skills necessary to write amazing poems. Each day will follow a simple "I do," "we do," model to prepare students for the freedom of next week's "you do," writing days. We'll teach students all about sound devices, line breaks, and the significant differences between publishing a poem versus an essay. While much shorter, a good poem is just as difficult to produce, as students will find out.

Lesson Plans

Materials
Monday, 3/9/2020 - Exposure to Poetry
Today, students will get their "first" exposure to free-verse poetry. While it's their "first" exposure, the diligent quotation marks are not without cause. They've read all of Inside Out and Back Again during our refugee unit, and that book is a master class in free-verse poetry. Today will mark our students' first exposure to poetry through the lens of a poet. They'll start out with a four-corner's discussion to learn about how poetry is different to all the other types of writing we've practiced this year. Then travel to and stop at numerous stations. At each station, they'll read and respond to the poem using what's known as an "It Says, I Say, So" protocol, and at the end of class, they'll answer a few questions on a Google Form to summarize today's learning. 
​Tuesday, 3/10/2020 - Topic Selection
As with short stories, the biggest mistake that students make with poetry is choosing the wrong topic. Writing about the death of a grandparent last month is going to have a lot of feeling attached, but it will be too recent to capture. Writing about choosing the right socks, Reebok, Nike, or Under Armor, will have no feeling attached, and will be boring. The goal of today's lesson is for students to have a variety of student-created topics to choose from. They'll watch a brief Slides about topic selection before participating in a gallery walk during which they'll brainstorm a series of poem topics based on classic, teenage-angsty poetry prompts. Once complete, they'll select five poem options out of their classmates' contributions, from which they'll refine three poems later this week.
Wednesday, 3/11/2020 - Breakin' Lines!
If you boil everything down, and distill it to the finest possibility, line breaks are the single, most important difference between prose and poetry. In prose, we only hit "enter" to start a new paragraph. With a poem, we intentionally hit "enter" frequently, and painstakingly plan when that "enter" should happen. [Return] for all you Mac users out there... Today, we'll start class with an informational Slides presentation explaining how to use line breaks intentionally in free-verse poetry. Then, naturally, we'll practice adding line breaks to prose to create rudimentary poetry. From the five poem options they selected yesterday, students will write one sentence based on each selected topic as a ticket out the door.
**Showing vs. Telling reminder from our short-story unit.
Thursday, 3/12/2020 - The Science of Sound
I know that poetry slams are the butt of every comedian's jokes, but poems need to sound beautiful, or discordant, or dull. Unlike an essay or a story, a poem's sound needs to match it's topic, and to make that happen, you need to employ sound devices. Today, students will be exposed to a series of sound devices, and then, we'll move into a sorting activity during which students sort examples of sound devices under their definition. They'll practice adding sound devices into the prose to which they added line breaks yesterday. From the five sentences they wrote yesterday, students will select the three they'll develop into poems as a ticket out the door.
Friday, 3/13/2020 - Poetry Tools and Mind Mapping
Today's class will be more divergent than I generally like classes to be. The first half of class will be devoted to demonstrating how to use our poetry-writing tool. The second will be spent observing while students create a mind map of everything they've learned this week.

Poetry Writing Project

As important as the first week of our unit is in teaching kids how to write poetry, this week is equally important. This week is when the rubber meets the road. (As a marathon runner, I know rather more about the intricacies of the dichotomy of rubber and road than most English teachers, and I can tell you, it's usually a struggle!) This week, from a teaching perspective, is simple. Monday-Wednesday, students will write one poem each day. Thursday, they'll have a chance to finish, or revise their poems. Friday we'll enjoy the fruits of each others' labor. I personally cannot wait to read our kids' poems!

Poetry Description

This unit will end with the creation of a three-poem anthology. Each student will write three poems based on different parts of their lives. For example, I am a teacher, father, and bicycle mechanic. I might write one poem about each part of who I am. Those three poems will all be published in another giant anthology like the one from our Short Story unit, and students will have a chance to read and respond to each other's work.

Success Skills

Write poems that show intentional use of language to serve the purpose of the individual poem.
  • W 8.4, W 8.11b, L 8.5, L 8.6
Collaborate with peers to create, critique, and improve writing.
  • W 8.4, SL 1b, SL 2, L 8.3
Interpret and analyze poems by rubric success criteria.
  • RL 8.11, SL 2, ​L 8.3
Common Core Learning Standards

Poem Writing Timeline​

Monday, 3/16/2020 - Wednesday 3/18/2020

Each of these days will follow the same procedure:
  1. Share some amazing poems written the day before.
  2. Model the Karpie Method of Free Verse Poetry with a new topic. [This serves both as a reminder about how to use the tool, and a model for how quickly these poems can be written.]
  3. Structured work time to write one of the three poems in students' poetry anthology.
  4. Wrap up sharing anecdotal behavioral and poem-specific observations throughout class.

Thursday, 3/19/2020

Today we'll follow our peer-review protocol. Students will use the speed-dating protocol from the end of our Food Chains unit to share and receive actionable feedback based on the poetry rubric.
After receiving feedback, they'll have half the class to modify and improve their poems before finally submitting them for our whole-team anthology. (Then it's another long night of photocopying for Ms. Davis and I.) 

Friday, 3/20/2020

Students will spend the entirety of today's class in silence. They'll be nestled deeply in the tomes of their classmate's writing. They'll respond to the writing using the methods we modelled and practiced yesterday. ​
This year's "peer review" is actually a "self review" due to COVID-19. We roll with the punches.
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